A traffic manager is a network device that manages network traffic. Some traffic managers manage the flow of network traffic between network devices. Some traffic managers control the flow of data packets to and from an array of application servers. A traffic manager can manage and distributes Internet, intranet or other user requests across redundant arrays of network servers, regardless of the platform type. Traffic managers can support a wide variety of network applications such as web browsing, e-mail, telephony, streaming multimedia and other network protocol traffic. The BIG-IP® family of traffic managers, by F5 Networks of Seattle, Wash., are examples of traffic managers.